


Take It Away

by ShrimpZilla



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Drug Withdrawal, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 02:59:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2676467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShrimpZilla/pseuds/ShrimpZilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen goes through lyrium withdrawal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take It Away

**Author's Note:**

> written for the dragon age kink meme.

He couldn’t concentrate. He had the tendrils of a headache burrowing deep into his temple. He could feel the pressure on his forehead throb with every heartbeat. Conversation wafted around him. He tried to focus on what was written on the papers he was holding, tried to grind his teeth in just the right way that the headache might be drowned out. Across from him Trevelyan fidgeted as she listened to whatever was being said. She ran her fingers over the armored scales of her new robes, her fingernails making a dull clicking sound against the metal. A vein on his temple pulsed.

  
“Could you stop that?” He asked tensely. Her hand stopped immediately but she did not remove it. She looked at him, started by his outburst. They all did. He cleared his throat.

“Thank you.” Her hand fell away as she turned her gaze back to the map. He caught the young mage glance up at him through her eyelashes furtively. Concern stitched in her eyebrows. He pretended not to notice and tried to focus anew.

\--

His headache hadn’t left and he had barely slept through the night. Now it was not just a pounding but a stabbing, blinding pain. It settled behind his right eye, screwed in tight and only getting tighter. It made him dizzy and nauseous. His mouth watered sour and metallic. He wanted to crawl into a dark room, press his forehead against something cold and hard, and pass out into oblivion.

  
Hands on his wrists vaulted him from his pain for a moment. Trevelyan leaned up, using his arms as leverage, and pressed her lips to his. “Your lips are dry,” she mumbled into him. The sound of her voice grated up his spine into his head. He stepped away, pulling from her light grasp, and touched his fingers to his temple. “Are you okay?” She asked.

  
“Yes. You just… can’t do things like that in public. We agreed to keep this a secret for the time being.” His words felt heavy and sluggish in his mouth. He looked at her through the pain in his head, in his eye. The sun was reflecting off her hair and her armor and her staff. She very nearly glowed. The sight of it made his throat clench.

  
“There’s no one around,” she said airily. “I wanted to say a proper goodbye.” She reached out to him and he shrugged her touch away anxiously. “Sorry,” she offered. He watched confusion and maybe a little hurt settle on her face. He wanted to say something, grab her, hold her, kiss her. But he couldn’t. He felt eyes watching them. People whispering rumors. “I’ll be back in a few days.”

  
“Goodbye, Inquisitor,” he managed. Her mouth twitched. He lowered his eyes and kneading his temple. When he looked back up she was gone.

\--

“Commander, free to spar?” Blackwall called, his voice like a knife through Cullen’s eye. He turned and forced a smile.

  
“I’m afraid not,” he responded hesitantly. “Perhaps Cassandra is available?” He hoped the Warden couldn’t hear the tremor in his voice. He felt like everyone must know what was going on with him. There was no way they couldn’t. He was sweating, shaking, sick. He felt people sneaking stares behind his back. He imagined them whispering the word lyrium. The thought stung his throat.

  
Blackwall lumbered off, muttering something about getting beaten by Cassandra too many times. Cullen eased a breath. He fidgeted beneath his armor, his shoulders sore and his muscles protesting the weight. Just a few more hours and he could go to bed guilt free. He took another deep breath, the cold air fresh in his lungs but biting to the pain in his chest and head. When he turned Cole was there and he jumped at the sight. His stomach flipped dangerously. He offered Cullen a glass of water.

  
“You’re all sharp edges. Drumbeats like hammers and nails.” Cullen looked the offering and mostly ignored the nonsense the boy mumbled. He was thirsty. So very thirsty. He hadn’t even realized it before now. He reached out and stopped. There was something wrong with the water. It was too blue? Not blue enough? Blue, soaking through the cup and glowing, staining Cole’s hands in its light.

  
“No,” Cullen whispered through cracked lips. “No, no, no.” He shook his head until he couldn’t see the boy any longer. There was nothing but a cup dropped on the floor by his feet and the sound of ringing in his ears. His skin crawled beneath his armor and he fought down the urge to scream and vomit.

\--

He polished his armor until it gleamed so much that it made his head roar. He oiled his leathers until the smell made him sick. He laid in bed, wide eyed and desperate for sleep. He wrote letters in the dark to no one and everyone. He sat on the floor and cried.

  
He awoke with a low groan in his sweat soaked sheets. His head pounded until he realized that it was a knocking on his door. He rolled over and was hit with a wave of vertigo. The room spun. His stomach twisted. His skin itched with a million feather light touches. Finally he made it to his feet, climbed slowly and haltingly down the ladder, and opened the door. The solider on the other side stared at him for a moment before Cullen realized that he was dressed in only his sleeping clothes. He tried to square his shoulders against the humiliation.

  
“Um, Commander, Seeker Cassandra is looking for you. It’s passed noon, ser.” He felt scared and inadequate. Small.

  
“Tell the Seeker I’m feeling under the weather today and am not to be disturbed. I’ll meet with her tomorrow.”

  
“Yes, Commander.”

  
The soldier left and Cullen shakily made his way across the room. He picked up a pitcher of water but when he brought it to his lips the smell of it, the look of it turned his stomach. He placed it back down, disgusted, but missed and it fell to the floor. Water pooled around his feet. The sensation unnerved him and he felt himself shaking again.  
Tomorrow, he told himself, tomorrow things would be back to normal.

\--

Tomorrow never came. Only nightmares, hideous twisted images of things that had happened. He was covered in blood, rotted flesh hung from the rafters. Everything was on fire, hot and melted and he couldn’t breathe from the ash. There was laughing, high pitched and terrible like an animal being stuck through. Claws on his flesh, the sound of teeth shattering, a white hot blaze of terror and fury.

  
Shadows over faces. People he knew. Ghosts carried torches that whispered terrible things. Cold hands, dead hands, reached to grab him and pull him under. He couldn’t scream. There was water in his lungs. Dirt in his throat. He was bleeding, everyone was bleeding, blood like bathwater in buckets and basins.

  
He was trapped. His friends died. Empty world with empty eyes and empty thoughts. There were words on the edge of his vision. He didn’t want to know. Blue fire, blue water, blue air sang the song written on his soul.

  
What you need, what you need, what you need.

\--

In the haze of it all he felt cold fingers combing through his hair. He leaned into the sensation. More fingertips pressed then to his cheek. A thumb rubbed beneath his eye. Everything was tender and soft. His body ached. He hurt but this other comforted. The cold vivid against his hot, clammy skin.

  
“Cullen?” A voice in the dark. His mind reached achingly towards it. He recognized the sound. It reminded him of Chantry bells in the early morning back home, the feeling of safety inherent in the sound. He choked out a name but it sounded wrong in his mouth, wrong against the voice. “Cullen, it’s okay. I’m here now.” He tried again but it was still wrong. He couldn’t remember faces and names just voices, one voice, this voice.

  
There was water on his lips and he gasped. A hand lifted his head by the neck to help him drink. He hadn’t opened his eyes. He wondered if he could. What would he see? He thought of his nightmares and trembled, water spilling across his face as he thrashed away from it. “Sh,” someone soothed. A hand in his hair again and another on his chest.  
“Where am I?” He managed. Finally he dared to open his eyes. He was in a room, in a bed but he recognized none of it. A young woman leaned over him and smiled sadly when she saw him awake.

  
“You’re safe,” she promised. She was beautiful. He wanted to believe her but there was a terrified pressure in his heart. “Cullen, how do you feel?” She kept saying his name but he didn’t know hers. He didn’t know her. He shifted away from her touches, embarrassed and confused. The room spun with the movement. He sank lower in the bed.  
“I don’t… Who are you? What’s going on?” He was frantic.

  
“Cullen,” she said his name again in that silken tone. She lifted a hand to his forehead. He remembered how cool and refreshing her hands were and went to lean in. Then he saw the glow. The frost spell hanging on her fingertips.

  
“Mage!” He breathed in accusation, floundering away. “Stay away from me!” She shrunk back. He saw hurt in her eyes, her lips turned in a grimace. He wanted to reach out and he did but pulled back again. She stood from her place beside him and gave a smile despite what he saw in her eyes.

  
“Try to get some more sleep. You’ll feel better.” She walked away and he whimpered. She hadn’t said his name that time.

\--

He regained consciousness again, blearily. The light in the room had changed. It was dark now. Quiet. He saw the woman from earlier curled in a chair, her body bent as she used the nightstand to hold her head. He looked at her face, kind and sad and tired. He wondered what sort of dreams she was having. But then it was not just her and her sleep face but others, multitudes, surrounding his bed. He shrunk back into it and pulled the tangled sheets further around him.

  
He saw his mother and his sisters with their eyes dark and their faces lost and forgotten. He didn’t know them anymore, too many years passed since he had made an attempt at family.

  
He saw Amell looking frightened and trusting. But she was dead, he remembered that much, killed in Uldred’s twisted uprising.

  
He saw Amell, again, but different as the demons had offered her altered enough that he had been able to see the difference. Not robes, but chains. Not scared, but lustful. Not Amell, but his.

  
He saw Bethany Hawke looking kind and gentle. He had tried, hadn’t he? Tried to make her transition to the Circle painless. Tried to keep her from being a pawn in the politics her sister stirred up.

  
He saw Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall, with her crooked smile and her accusing eyes. She had hated him and welcomed him in turns as she shouldered the burdens of too many friends of which he could not count himself.

  
He heard them all. Voices in the night but loud and horrible. My son is leaving! Find me a Templar for a husband, brother? I was glad it was you at my Harrowing. Save me, take me, make me yours. You’re a good man for a Templar. If you take my sister I’ll kill you.

  
He shut his eyes to drown them out but heard them all the louder. He cried, buried his face in his hands, and then in the chest of the woman as she grabbed him to her. He held her by her shoulders and felt that she might break apart in his grasp. Her fingers laced behind his neck and she held him steady. She whispered things into his hair. He couldn’t hear them over the sound of his own crying but they comforted him all the same.

\--

He woke up. His mind was foggy, clouded, but he could think. He heard water splashing off to the side. Struggling he pushed himself into a sitting position in the bed. Every muscle burned as if he had been beaten badly. He felt shaky and weak. His skin was cold and damp. He reeked of body odor and vomit.

  
“Cullen?” He looked over and saw Trevelyan sitting next to a large tub. She was casting ice into it and then heating it until it melted. She stopped instantly when he saw her.

“How do you feel?” She asked with a hesitance he found unnerving. He pulled the sheet up to cover his chest, embarrassed and pained by the way he must appear to her.

  
“Better,” he confirmed though he had very little certainty. He wondered how long he had been in bed. If she was back then it had been days.

  
“Do you…” She trailed off and bit her lip. “Remember me?”

  
“Yes,” he responded instantly. He wondered what he might have said to her in his fevered state, wondered how long she had been there with him. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to see me like this.”

  
“Cullen,” she spoke with tender reprimand. He heard relief in her voice beneath what sounded like fatigue. “I love you. I wasn’t going to sit in the tavern while you suffered up here alone.”

  
“It was my choice, my burden. I didn’t want—“ He stopped and looked away. It was easier if he didn’t look at her. “I didn’t want you to see me so… weak. Or to be disgusted.” He felt the bed bob as she sat on it, felt her delicate touch on his jaw. He allowed his head to be turned.

  
“You don’t disgust me and I don’t think you’re weak. You’re one of the strongest people I know.” She kissed his forehead. “You risked your life for a principle. That’s the stuff I love about you. I wouldn’t let it scare me away.” He closed his eyes and sighed. He felt exhausted still but better. Better for having her by him.

  
“Did I say anything unforgivable?” She laughed. The sound made him feel better than lyrium ever had. It was all worth it for that, for her.

  
“Nothing unforgivable.” She kissed his forehead again and then his lips. “Let’s get you in the bath.”

  
“Going to bathe me?” He tried to be lighthearted. He stood, leaning slightly on her shoulder and she helped him towards the bath she had prepared. She stripped him, pulling his pants down and helping him step out of them.

  
“It’s good practice,” she said as he stepped into the warm water. He lowered himself shakily. It felt good to be out of bed, out of his own filth.

  
“For what?” She began rubbing his shoulders with a cloth and he found himself relaxing. The tension and the pain rolling away if even just for the moment. She leaned in and kissed his cheek, throwing her arms over his shoulders and pressing her face to his neck.

  
“For when you’re old and I have to do this stuff for you anyway.” He laughed a little and kissed her hair.

  
“You need to work on your beside manner.”


End file.
